


Thou Hast Me, If Thou Hast Me (at the Worst)

by veausy



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Childhood Friends, Childhood Sweethearts, Clueless Eleven | Jane Hopper, Coming of Age, F/M, Freeform, Pining, Possessive Behavior, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 03:48:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16339256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veausy/pseuds/veausy
Summary: Mock me mercifully, because I love thee cruelly.





	Thou Hast Me, If Thou Hast Me (at the Worst)

**Author's Note:**

> Double feature foray into character studies!  
> You're heard of amnesia!Mike, now get ready for possessive!El; featuring a badass fearless El (which is canon) whose emotional baggage has actual consequences on her life (which isn't).

When she first met Mike, El was bigger than he was, and braver. 

There was a deafening clamor from the little kids running around the play yard of the school she’d transferred to, but years of bouncing around foster homes had made her strongly attuned to the elements of children’s interactions that bordered on dangerous. She wondered if she’d ever be in a place where she wouldn’t have to be on high alert like this anymore. 

From where she was crouched in the sandbox and helping a little girl to fix the French braid that had come undone, she spotted Mike sitting on the half-vacant seesaw, surrounded by three boys who didn’t look up to any good. With a quick pat on the little girl’s head and a request to hold the braid tight where El was still not finished with it, she stood and began to make her way over to the altercation. 

“I didn’t know you wanted to use it,” Mike was stuttering, trying to rise from where he was seated on one end of the plank, but one of the boys shoved him back down roughly. “I didn’t know that – that I can’t use it –“ 

“Well, now you will,” shouted another of them, a meaner and bulkier one, and they began to make their way to the other side, where the opposite end of the seesaw was high in the air. She could anticipate where this was going, and her legs moved faster. She reached Mike just as two of the boys jumped to grip the seat and slam it down, and her arms wrapped around his waist to heave him backward just as the seat he’d been on catapulted into the sky. 

They both grunted when he landed on her, the dry dirt beneath them floating up into the air like a cloud and making them cough. 

One of the bullies roared with laughter, approaching them. “Aw, needed a girl to save you, little baby?” 

And that wasn’t new. Considering how often she was barging into problems to deescalate them, she’d heard this taunt many times uttered to boys much bigger than her, much more intimidating than her. El prepared herself for the way Mike would probably jerk away now, flushing with embarrassment and fury at her actions, denying that he’d needed her help and telling her to stay away from him. She kept her eyes on the grimy ground as she panted, still catching her breath from the sprint she’d been in to get to him, but the rejection never came. 

“Thanks,” Mike said softly, still sitting between her legs but looking at her over his shoulder, awed. 

“Ooh, found yourself a girlfriend, Wheeler?” the same boy taunted, leaning down next to them and making kissy faces. “Maybe she’ll protect you forever now.” 

El rose to her feet and stepped up close to him, making him straighten and watch her apprehensively. “Too bad you don’t have anybody who would do that for you.” He blinked. She jerked forward, as if to slam her body into his, and watched with satisfaction when he jerked back. “And you never will.” 

He shook his head like he deemed her not worth the trouble, but the fact was that he withdrew, scampering back to his friends and telling them he ‘wasn’t allowed to hit girls.’ She smirked, knowing that allowance meant nothing to people like him, and he’d have hit her if he’d had the guts. Then, she turned to offer Mike a hand up. 

He took it eagerly, a small _oof_ falling from his lips when he stumbled into her, and she felt a little soft spot in her chest get compressed as she looked at the top of his head. He was so tiny, nearly a head shorter than she was and so frail-looking. She reached forward to pat his clothes down of the dust that coated it, and he looked a little pink when she was done. “Thanks,” he murmured again, looking at the ground. 

“What’s your name?” she asked, arms crossing over her chest. The woman she recognized as her teacher had reappeared in the corner of the yard, calling for her students to line up to go back inside, and El eyed the three bullies when they started walking over. 

“Um, it’s Mike. Short for Michael,” he said, big round eyes finding hers again from under a curtain of fringe. She reached over and flicked the inky strands out of his face, frowning a little. His eyes crossed as he followed the movement. “What’s yours?” 

“I’m El,” she told him, turning to the side when the little girl from the sandbox patted her hip and held her half-finished braid out with a pout. Leaning down, she made quick work of the hair, tying it securely as she listened to the teacher yell again, and then directed the girl to go back to her circle of giggling friends by the swings. “How old are you?” she asked, turning back to Mike. 

“I’m nine.” 

Now her eyes were round. “What? _You’re_ nine?” 

He blinked at her, confused. “Why, how old are you?” he returned, accusatory. 

“ _I’m_ nine,” she told him, eyeing his miniature frame with concern. “You look five at best.” 

He flushed, fingers fiddling with his jacket jerkily, and opened his mouth to retort when the teacher’s voice came, shrill, much nearer to them, “You two! Why are you dawdling? I’ve been calling the class in for five minutes!” 

They turned to look at her, standing a few feet away with her hands on her hips, brows furrowed. “Michael, get in line,” she ordered, pointing behind her. The boy quickly complied, eyes down and fringe hanging low again as he stumbled over to the queue of students by the door. The three bullies seemed to notice this. El’s hands clenched. “What’s your name?” the teacher demanded huffily, full attention on her now. 

“El,” she supplied, unapologetic and unyielding as she stared right back up at her. 

“El Hopper?” the woman’s frowned deepened. “You’re my new kid?”

El shrugged. 

“Well, get in the line,” the teacher said incredulously, rolling her eyes and turning her head up to the sky like she was praying. El’s eyes bugged out at this, but she walked slowly to stand behind Mike, smiling back at him when he threw a happy grin at her. 

\-- 

After that initial introduction, they grew closer every day. 

In class, they sat on opposite sides of the room and rarely got to talk outside of the occasional break times for arts and crafts, but they gravitated toward each other whenever there was an opportunity, even if they didn’t talk much at all. El was quiet by nature, broody and distant, but Mike seemed content to let her stew in her thoughts while they cut up the thick construction paper and put googly eyes on their creations. When he did speak, it was a quiet, unassuming ramble about something annoying his big sister did at home, or a complaint that his dog chewed through his favorite shoelaces, and El just soaked it in, let it fill the empty spaces inside her that she had no way to spackle up on her own. 

The nature of their very first and most memorable interaction was something that dug its heels into the very fabric of her, and she let it dictate everything that she did. She glowered anytime one of the bullies walked too close to either of them, and the two times she caught some similar interactions between them and Mike, she’d actually permitted herself to throw punches. Three out of four of them landed, and the shame of tattling on a girl who’d beaten them up kept the boys quiet – the fear of repetition kept them away. Mike, in turn, seemed like he grew more confident after that, less orbiting her out of a fear of being unprotected and more just careening straight at her because he knew he could. She was still bigger, though, and much braver. 

When Miss Irene chastised Mike for misbehaving during class – and it wasn’t _misbehavior_ , it was him laughing at El making faces from across the room, which made her feel both guilty and angry – El stuck to his side all day as her way of apology, doing whatever he wanted them to do at recess and giving him the warm chocolate chip cookie that came with her lunch. He’d looked at her like she’d offered him all of her earthly belongings, but it was probably because he didn’t know she hated chocolate chip cookies. Still, she liked that she could put that look on his face. 

In turn, Mike showed her all the places he liked inside the school: the little reading nook in the library that had a bunch of cushions in a giant pile, the random palm tree someone had put in a pot and set next to the janitor's closet on the second floor, the bowl of candy next to the nurse’s office door that was always filled with yellow Laffy Taffies. El hated the things, but she stuck a few in her pocket anytime she passed by the bowl so that she could hand them off to Mike later. 

He didn’t grow much at all, in those first few years that she knew him. He stayed small and wiry and jumpy, bony knees poking through his pants every time he climbed on his bike after school to pedal himself home. She always watched him until the end of the block, because she knew he liked glancing back at her over his shoulder, and she wanted to be able to warn him if he suddenly ended up going straight at a tree in his distraction. Once he was out of sight, so was she, and she could turn back to the parking lot knowing he wasn’t trying to multitask anymore. And anyway, Hopper always ran late picking her up, so she had about fifteen minutes that she could spend watching Mike try to do wheelies before the familiar truck even came into view. 

El had not had very many things, before Hopper took her in. Moving from place to place long before she could even form memories, not to mention memories of each home, had made her loath to hold onto anything, but moreover unable to. All that fit in her sad little overnight bag was some clothes and toiletries, barely anything that had any value at all. For the first time, she found a thing she wanted to have – and it really seemed like she’d get to, as the months wore on and Mike didn’t seem to get bored of her. Mike was this thing that she got to have, and his earnest, grateful gaze at every semi-nice thing she did for him was like sunshine on a cloudy day. She’d keep every bully away, if he kept looking at her like that. She’d even fight off adults. 

By fifth grade, they were inseparable.

\-- 

It was weird at first, living with Hopper. 

Not through any real effort of the foster system, but through covertly listening in on the conversations of administrators, El found out the story of his life – that his daughter died, that his wife had left, that he was trying to fill the gaping hole with something that made him feel noble, maybe. Something that made him feel less terrible, maybe. 

He was awkward and stilted for the first few weeks, clearly a little off his footing with a girl several years older than his daughter had been, and she couldn’t help feeling her skin crawl sometimes, when she found shiny pink headbands in drawers and a half-finished princess coloring book stuck between thick tomes on a shelf. It was like living in a mausoleum, except she was alive, and she wasn’t sure if he expected her to take the place of his daughter through replication – or what would happen if she didn’t. Going back into the system wasn’t scary, she’d done it nearly a hundred times, but she actually kind of liked the guy. He was funny, when he wasn’t trying to be. (Extremely unfunny, when he was.)

About six weeks in, she put one of those stupid pink headbands in her hair as she was getting ready for school and came downstairs for breakfast sullenly. It took her several minutes and two Eggos to notice the thick silence, and when she glanced up, Hopper was staring at her head with a constipated look on his face. “What?” she asked, through a mouthful of her third waffle. Mike was all about the cookies and the taffies, but he never said a single thing about Eggos; she couldn’t comprehend it. 

Hopper shook his head a little, like he was clearing it, and the mug he’d been holding close to his chest clinked as it touched the countertop carefully. “Where’d you find that thing?” 

She blinked. “You mean you didn’t buy it for me?” 

He tilted his head, giving her his best glare. “Like you wouldn’t punch me if I tried.” 

“Saw it in the drawer by the sink. There’s a lot of them in there.” She tried to be nonchalant, but she could feel herself tensing. Moment of truth. 

“And you, what, felt like being a lady today?” 

She finished off the third waffle, staring him in the eyes as she chewed painstakingly, cheeks puffing out. It was about a minute later that she swallowed, and she set her fork down onto the plate with a clatter. “You don’t like it?” 

He leaned over the countertop, weight on his elbows as his forearms aligned in a vague imitation of a self-hug. “I don’t mind it. But I didn’t think you liked that kind of stuff. Are you experimenting? Have girls been saying stuff to you?” He sounded vaguely protective then, like some little girls calling her names might be the worst thing that could happen. She smiled inwardly. 

“You know I don’t talk to any girls.” 

“Mike, then? That Mike kid? Don’t listen to him, boys are idiots, nothing that kid says is –“ 

Feeling her own protective twinge, the exact source of which was unclear even to her, El rolled her eyes. “Oh, my God, Mike barely even knows I have hair, much less what I put in it.” 

Hopper nodded, appraising. “Do you want him to?” 

“Do I want him to what?” 

He shook his head, quick, backtracking on something she hadn’t quite managed to catch. “Why’s that thing in your hair, then?” 

“Just trying stuff out. I don’t know. You don’t care?” 

He tilted his head again, watching her shrewdly. “No, I don’t. You _should_ be trying things and seeing what you like, but not for any reason other than that you want to.” 

She nodded, once. That was fine. She could live with that. “Okay,” she sighed, yanking the stretchy fabric out of her hair, sticking it in her pocket. “I don’t want to.” 

He laughed then, really loudly, and kept giving her affectionate looks in the car as he drove her to school. 

\-- 

Middle school was supposed to be a fun change, not scary. 

El managed to keep up with the assignments and really process the lessons so that she wouldn’t have to play catch-up every weekend, and she and Mike had only half of their classes together, so she was able to focus a bit more. 

What was distracting was when she noticed him start hanging around other kids, three boys she knew from a couple of her own classes, and a girl who looked nice enough but didn’t really give anyone the time of day. She felt too much like El – too much like a replacement. 

That was when she started noticing the weird feelings, the dark thoughts that curled at the edges of her consciousness sometimes, the tug in her chest that made her feel small and stupid. Everyone was allowed to talk to people and laugh with people and let people pull them up from the ground when they fell. She didn’t have a monopoly on Mike’s time. Why did she even want to? 

\-- 

Before El even noticed it – much less had a chance to stop it, Dustin, Will, and Lucas became a non-negotiable addition onto her friendship with Mike. Max hovered at the edges, sensing El’s animosity and lacking any real interest in fighting it. 

El strove to establish herself as the older, better, more important pillar of Mike’s world, keeping her face blank and stony around the boys, refusing to warm up to them. If they understood her reasons for it, they didn’t bring them to light, and for the most part they tried to stay out of her way just as Max did. 

El stuck by Mike’s side at lunch and always called Mike’s bike when the five of them had to figure out their formation on only three vehicles. Her hand would creep out to touch some part of him or his things when he’d get too animated in conversation with someone else, and she hated it, she hated herself for it. The feeling hung over her like a raincloud that never quite burst, getting heavier and heavier until she felt it sitting on top of her. Every moment with Mike was tainted with her irritation at having his attention drawn away from her, which served quite well to distract her from the very real fear of losing his attention altogether. 

\-- 

In high school, it got worse. 

She’d managed to accept, begrudgingly, that the boys were there to stay. Boys could relate to Mike on a level that she couldn’t; that was something she understood, even if it rankled. 

Through the passage of the years, she even allowed herself to form a bond with Max, similarly dissimilar from her bond with Mike, simply because Max always discreetly handed her a tampon if she needed one and lent her touch-up concealer if her acne started to act up. They shopped together a total of two times during freshman year, and somehow Max always managed to bring the conversation to whether Mike would like some item of clothing or another, and the monster inside El’s chest raged. After the second outing, she refused to agree to any others. 

Mike remained clueless, his sweet little smile staying out of the shadow of understanding her constant glowers and her snappishness. It was ridiculous, really, how long he let her get worse and worse. 

It was in the fall of their sophomore year, when they were sitting in the library and a girl El only vaguely recognized stopped by their table, that it all spilled between them, poison seeping into all the cracks. 

“Stacy!” Mike greeted, looking up from his textbook. His ever-present fringe flopped into his eyes even as he ducked his head to move it, and El fought the urge to fix it for him – not because she thought he’d mind, but because she got weird looks from other people each time and it was starting to make her feel like a freak. “What’s up?” 

“Um,” Stacy ventured, blushing delicately in a way El never could, and tucked a long strand of strawberry blond hair behind her ear. Her other hand fiddled with the edge of the table beside where Mike’s fingers lay splayed. “I was wondering if you – um – if you had a date to the homecoming dance? I just haven’t heard of you saying yes to anyone, so I figured you might be free to –“ 

“Well, he isn’t,” El snapped, jerking her eyes up from the way Stacy’s hand kept edging closer to Mike’s to make cold eye contact. “Thanks for asking, though.” 

Stacy’s jaw dropped, eyes round as she stared at her. Mike’s face swiveled toward her as well, but El couldn’t focus on him until the girl was gone, and Stacy didn’t seem to be leaving quite yet. “What, are you his date or something?” 

“No,” El said. “Neither are you, though.”  
  
“I don’t think I was talking to you. You’re not his keeper. Are you mad because he turned you down already?” The saccharine look that had masked her face when she’d first walked up had turned nasty now, bitter. El had known, though, that it was hidden there to begin with. 

“I would never ask him to the dance. He doesn’t want to go, we never go to those stupid things.” El crossed her arms and leaned back. “Not that it’s your business, anyway.” 

“El,” Mike started, voice tight. “I’m …” 

She let her eyes slide down to his, taking in the uncomfortable look on his face. For a second, she couldn’t figure out which of her or Stacy was causing it. “What?” 

Mike breathed in, and his eyes looked unbelievably sad right then, before he flicked them up at Stacy with a smile. “Yeah, Stacy, I’ll go with you.” 

The other girl grinned at him, nodding as she stepped back and made her way to the group of girls waiting for her in the corner. El watched as she reached them and started whispering, all four heads turning and giving her a range of judgmental looks. With a stone in her chest, she let her gaze land on Mike again, who was watching her with apprehension. He didn’t seem remorseful, just utterly sad, which made El want to vomit.  
  
“Fine,” she said, gathering up her things and storming out.

\-- 

She and Mike didn’t talk for the rest of that month. Not for lack of effort, on his part, but she felt humiliated and abandoned and hurt, and she couldn’t deal with it. She didn’t know how. 

Max became her closest friend (though not as close as Mike had been, nobody could ever do that), confiding girly gossip and cheering her up with little things like showing up at El’s house one Saturday with a box of Eggos that El still loved but that Hopper had stopped buying, grousing that they were unhealthy. 

In the two classes she had with Mike, El still watched him like a hawk whenever he interacted with anybody and felt steam coming out of her ears when he smiled at someone who wasn’t her, but as soon as the bell rang she was out of the door, ducking in the crowded halls so he couldn’t catch up to her. 

That was the problem with having so few things to herself. When just one was taken away, it felt like absolutely everything was. 

\-- 

“Lucas just asked me out,” Max said in greeting when she sat beside El at lunch one day. Her long tresses fluttered behind her, a little reminiscent of Mike’s fringe, and it was a poor replacement – but El reached over to tug the strands over her shoulder anyway. “Finally.” 

El blinked. “What?” 

“Yeah, the doofus apparently couldn’t read any of the hints I’ve been dropping for three years. He thought I wore that ugly Yankees hat for a week because I liked the team,” Max made a face, sticking her tongue out. 

“Three years?” El echoed. “But you’d always talk about Mike when we went shopping - ?” 

It was Max’s turn to blink. Her hands froze over the Tupperware container from which she’d begun to dig out her sandwich. “Uh, yeah? I thought you asked me to go shopping so we could buy things to impress him.” 

“Why would I – why – I don’t even –“ 

“Yeah,” Max sighed. “That’s exactly what I figured out, after that second time. You’re really clueless, aren’t you?” 

El scowled. “About what?” 

Max shook her head. “You’ll get there. Just don’t take too long.” 

“Too long to do _what_?” El huffed, exasperated. 

Max rolled her eyes and patted El’s hand patronizingly. “To go on double dates with us.” 

\-- 

Hopper was a good dad, once he got the hang of it. After he’d made it official and signed the adoption papers during El’s last year of middle school, it was like he had recommitted himself to the role with renewed fervor, buying her anything she ever needed, taking her to a therapist every week, and chatting with her about things that were important to her even when she could tell he was dying of boredom. 

So she felt comfortable, sometime around the end of November, muting the television show they were watching and shifting on the couch to set her feet in his lap. “Boys suck,” she announced. 

He nodded. “I mean, yeah. But are we talking about one in particular?”

“Mike sucks,” she elaborated. 

His brow furrowed. “Never thought I’d hear that one. What’d he do?” 

“He just,” she started, staring at the remote in her hands. “He’s different now. He’s changed.” 

“He being mean to you or somethin’?” 

“No, no,” she rebuffed quickly. “Just … it’s like he’s got secrets now. I used to know everything, I used to be, like, the person he went to for everything. And it’s not like that anymore. He hates me now.”

Hopper sat up, frown in full force. “He _hates_ you? Start from the beginning.” 

In the longest monologue of her entire life, El lay down the entire story, from the weird feelings she started having several years back to the way she ran away from Mike now in the hallways. Hopper had a vague little smile on his face at the end, so she slapped his arm. “It’s not funny.” 

He raised placating hands. “I’m not laughing.” After scrubbing at his five-o’clock shadow during a brief silence, he sighed. “I think I understand the problem. You’ve got a crush on him.” 

El squawked, staring at Hopper with horror. “Do not!” 

“Look, you’re all jealous when he’s with other girls, you cut off Max when she showed what you perceived as interest in him, you were hurt when he agreed to take Blondie to the dance, and now you’re boiling it all down to how boys suck. If it weren’t about him specifically, you’d probably have said that all people suck – which is also true.” 

El stared, feeling heat crawl up her neck.

“That’s nothing to be embarrassed of, or ashamed. If you’d never had a crush on anyone, I’d be more concerned. And I’m leery of the kid, but I do think he’s from the good batch, if there’s a good batch at all. My issue is with the bad feelings you keep having. I wish you’d talked to me sooner.”

El crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back into her little corner of the couch. “What about them?”

“A big chunk of human relationships, be it with friends or lovers or children or parents, hinges on ownership. It’s a bad thing that’s hard to separate from the good things, unfortunately. We want to own their hearts and their minds and their days and their memories, we want to infuse ourselves into their bloodstream and stick them into ours. It’s this urge, very biological, that we all struggle with. You’re not crazy for feeling it.” He glanced at her to check if she was still listening, finding her staring at the television blankly. He wrapped his hand around her ankle loosely and wiggled it a little, continuing, “But it’s a dangerous thing. You can’t own people. You can’t try to control them or the things they choose to do, if what they choose to do is not what you want. The amazing thing about real love – platonic or not – is that it is liberating. Ever heard that saying, ‘if you love a thing, let it go’? There’s truth to it. When you’re forcing someone to be around you, it just feels grosser, dirtier, worse than when they actively choose to be around you.” 

El blinked, but didn't move. 

“There’s a very thin, very risky line there, of course. Some people will let you possess them. They’ll surrender to you and let you take whatever you want, and that’s nice, too – to an extent. But you have to pull back when it gets ugly again, you have to make sure you don’t start making your own self feel dirty and gross with how much you take from them. You have to make sure you’re staying true to yourself, in the midst of all of that.” Hopper’s hand squeezed around her ankle, once, and let go. “And never, ever, ever let someone possess you when you don’t want them to.”

\-- 

The first week of December, El stayed behind after Chemistry class ended, finding Mike loitering as well, slowly filling his backpack as though he wanted to stretch the process out for hours. They were the only two left in the room, even the teacher had left, and yet Mike was still only halfway through packing his things up. Feeling emboldened, she approached his desk. 

“Hey,” she said, awkward and quiet. 

He must have given himself whiplash with how fast he snapped his head up. His eyes were wide and his bangs hung low. She reached out to fix them by instinct, then stopped her hand and let it fall. Mike caught the movement, swallowing. “Hi, El.” 

She took a deep breath and then expelled her words on the exhale, quick as she could, so she could turn tail and get out of the room. “I’m sorry about how I acted, and I’m sorry that I thought I could control what you did, I shouldn’t have expected you not to go to the dance just because I didn’t want to, and I shouldn’t have acted like a brat when you said yes to Stacy. Also, I’m sorry if I’ve been suffocating you or something or made you feel like you couldn’t tell me things, so I’m going to give you space now because I don’t want you to hate me.” They stared at one another for a second that felt like a century, and then El turned on her heel and walked out.

\--

Understanding her possessiveness and how to process it made El feel a little less ugly inside, but it didn’t quite stop her from being in its clutches anyway. 

When she came to Chemistry the next morning, Mike was leaning one hip against her desk, chatting with her pretty tablemate Melanie and laughing, and El felt her heart drop again. As she approached them, Mike turned to face her and smiled brightly, shifting so she could put her books down. “El, hey.” 

“Hey,” she returned woodenly, eyes sliding between him and Melanie, who was now watching them with open curiosity, perfect pink lips in a pout. 

“Want to get gelato with me at Tito’s after school?” 

She blinked, taking in the nervous twitch of his hand at his side, the way he bit his bottom lip. He’d become so tall recently, sprouting like a weed within the stretches of time when she wasn’t looking, and instead of seeing the crown of his head now, she had a feeling she was showing him hers. 

“Okay,” she said, feeling a little dumb and a little numb, but she smiled back when he beamed at her and watched him walk away. 

“You guys are too cute,” Melanie gushed when he was back in his seat, and El dropped her eyes, feeling her cheeks redden. 

\-- 

“I want the pistachio, though. Why are you switching it?” El complained at Tito’s several hours later. They’d been standing in line for over ten minutes, arguing through laughter about which flavors they would get so that they could both also enjoy each other’s. And this was familiar and this felt right, as foolish as it was. 

“No, you said you wanted the cherry literally two seconds ago, I’m saying we can get different scoops in both bowls and –“ 

“That’s stupid, you hate pistachio, getting flavors that we –“ 

“El, seriously, we can’t keep standing here for another hour, are you going to –“

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” 

El noticed Mike jump a little just before the foreign voice interrupted him, and she glanced over to see a girl behind him holding an upturned cup in her hand with a bunch of slush sliding down the back of Mike’s shirt. 

Mike pulled the hem out behind him, looking at it over his shoulder, but the gelato was seeping quickly, dark on the pale blue cotton and likely quite cold. El glared when more liquid started dripping from the cup and landing close to Mike’s shoes, reaching forward to smack it upright and startling the girl. “Watch it,” she snapped. 

“I’m so sorry,” the girl repeated, setting the empty cup to the side and reaching for some napkins. 

“It’s okay, really,” Mike said, good-natured as always, smiling with a shrug. “You didn’t mean to.” El’s chest caved in when the girl started wiping at Mike’s clothes, rubbing her hand persistently over his hip and making an even bigger mess out of the stain, but she heard Hopper’s voice in her head and stood still, letting it happen. She wasn’t part of this, she didn’t need to protect him from this. 

Mike laughed when he glanced at her, and she wasn’t sure what exactly he saw on her face, but then suddenly he was leaning over and pressing their lips together. El’s breath stuttered. 

“Oh,” the girl said, and her laughter tinkled somewhere to the side before her footsteps led her away. A fresh stack of napkins lay on the edge of the nearest table, when Mike pulled away and El chanced a glance down. 

“Why’d you do that?” she asked, almost without sound, holding one hand to her chest and one to her lips. 

Mike had transitioned to dabbing at his shirt carefully, trying to undo the mess that the girl had done, but most of the gelato had dried already, and the only thing to do would be to throw the shirt in the wash. 

“I wanted to,” Mike shrugged, still looking down at the shapeless blotch. And, wow, Hopper was right, it felt so good to get what she wanted when Mike wanted it, too. 

El snatched the napkins out of his hands and jerked the shirt down, twisting it so it hung right on him again. They could deal with the stain later. “You just,” she mocked, “wanted to?” 

He blinked. “Yeah. You did, too, right?” 

“What about Stacy?” she asked, voice sharp and heart feeble. She didn’t own him, she didn’t own him, and if she had to, she would let him go. 

“What _about_ Stacy?” he asked with a frown. 

El stood on the tips of her toes and kissed him again. 

\-- 

(“I said yes to her because I was mad that you acted like there was no way I could. Is that stupid? That’s probably stupid. But you just seemed so sure that I would never do anything else, and I was so sick of liking you when you acted completely uninterested in me, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. And I told her no, like, later that day, I didn’t even end up going with her. I didn’t go at all.” 

“You’re right, that’s really stupid.” 

“Oh, yeah? Well, at least I tried to get us out of that limbo! What’s with you and pretending you didn’t want to go with me to the dance when you clearly did?” 

“I didn’t know that I wanted to!” 

“You … ‘didn’t know that you wanted to’?” 

“I didn’t know.” 

“Who told you?” 

“Hopper told me.” 

“Your _dad_ had to tell you that you liked me?” 

“You owe him a lot, be extra nice to him when you see him.” 

“I can’t believe this. If Hopper hadn’t told you, you would have just never talked to me again?” 

“Not never, but maybe a few months. Years.” 

“That’s … I’m just so …” 

“Hey, Mike?” 

“I mean, seriously, I …” 

“Mike, kiss me.”) 

\-- 

She struggled with it even weeks down the line, even years. Mike was the first good thing she’d ever got to have, and he was _so good_ , and she’d made herself protect that goodness for so many years that she didn’t know if she could ever stop. 

It was through gritted teeth and clenched fists that she watched him build healthy, wholesome friendships with girls and boys around them, watched him develop hobbies that didn’t include her, but she did it nonetheless. She wasn’t as socially vibrant nor nearly as interested in other people’s time and attention as Mike was, but those outings to see a baseball game or catch a horror movie in the nearby theater or play video games after AV club meetings were things that sustained him in a way that El couldn’t. And a cage with a dead bird was worse than a cage with no bird at all. 

“I don’t know if I’ll ever – if I’ll get better. I want to,” she whispered once, as they sat on her back porch and gazed at the stars above the tree line. “I just don’t know if I can.” 

“What makes you think you can’t?” 

“You’re all the way under my skin. I can’t dig you out. And it was so many years of just us, and I built myself around that. I don’t need anyone else. It’s … it hurts, sometimes, that you still do.” 

Mike kissed her cheek and pulled her hand into his lap, playing with her fingers. “You only think that you don’t. But I could never give you what other people can. I mean, I couldn’t even make you understand what was going on between us – Hopper had to do that. Maybe you need different things from people, different from what I need, but you shouldn’t consider yourself a closed circle. If anything ever happened to me, it’d be shitty to think that you’d just be alone forever. I really hope that you wouldn’t.” 

El looked at his dim profile, watching the moonlight bounce off the smooth planes of his face, so innocent, just like that little boy who’d been sitting alone on the seesaw like he had no idea of the cruelty that was coming for him. It wasn’t just some cold, harsh possessiveness that made her ache everywhere, it was adoration, too. She didn’t want to pick him like a flower and stick him in her pocket so that she was the only one who got to have him, she wanted to build a fence around him so that nothing and nobody could ever tear him down. 

“I want to own you. I know that I never really could, and I wish I didn’t feel this way, but it’s still true.” He turned his face a little and blinked at her. “Does that scare you?”

He shrugged. “Not as much as it probably should.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary come from _Henry V._


End file.
